The words behind your anime

KyoAni Did It, Bring out the Pitchforks

Like most of you, I’ve recently finished watching the first episode of Hyouka. The story left me with a small smile on my face, wondering what we will see next week. I then proceeded to avoid all blog entries concerning the show.

You see, there’s no need to be an anime veteran to know that some shows are easier to enjoy without getting involved in the drama surrounding them. But even with this approach to the matter, moans about the heinous acts of KyoAni kept assaulting my ears. The nefarious studio stole somebody’s shoes in New Jersey, caused traffic jams in Morocco and was seen eating babies in its stronghold of Kyoto. And I thought, is it just me, or is it really impossible to discuss KyoAni shows without the conversation switching focus to the studio?

Questions like getting answers, so I decided to check. I went to Anime Nano and skimmed through the first ten [Hyouka – Episode 1] posts I could find. Results?

80% of the posts mention KyoAni

87,5% of the above mention KyoAni within the first paragraph/first few lines

one blogger gets extra points for working KyoAni into the post title

The two blogs to commit the atrocity of not dragging the studio into their episode impressions were CSW and Marth. Props to you.

Now wait a moment, you say, Hyouka is a loud show just beginning its run, it’s perfectly normal for everyone to mention the animation studio in their first post, and there’s nothing wrong with it appearing in the first paragraph – “Hyouka, KyoAni’s latest show, is a story about youth and pancakes…” – isn’t that the classic opening line?

You’re probably right. Just to make sure, I checked the same thing for another one of this season’s most lauded shows, Sakamichi no Apollon. You’ll have to forgive me for not using bullet points for presenting the results this time around, but… there’s not much to say. Only one out of ten blogs mentioned the studio responsible for the series anywhere in the text… stating that the author hasn’t watched anything else done by them so far. (The Black Sheep Project deserves props for doing the research, though!)

The irony here is that while many of the blogs included in the statistics above might take a critical stance towards KyoAni, their comments not only confirm, but also contribute to KyoAni’s brand awareness hegemony. Bloggers seem intent on making sure that any newcomer to the hobby knows the company name and can associate it with the studio’s work. KyoAni must be glad.

Makes me feel so uncultured that I don’t bother to even keep up with particular studio releases. The only times I know for sure that a series was done by a certain studio is when I pay enough attention to series OPs.

To be fair, though, it’s probably easier to lump studio trends together and talk about them without sounding as haughty as “oh, look, Kugimiya Rie is playing another loli tsundere.”

I think it’s admirable that those people try to introduce little twists to each character they perform. Everybody knows the audience expects ‘the usual Kugimiya/Noto’ and they can’t go rebellious and disappoint, but they have their pride as voice actors, too. If you try writing twenty stories on the same theme and keeping them all interesting, you see that their job might actually be more difficult than that of your average seiyuu.

The production studio is a fun factor too look at, but not an overall measurement point for the series. Like Marth said, it really doesn’t make a difference more the actually material and people involved on. Admittedly, it was interesting to hear KyoAni working on this type of show, but for now, I will focus on the content at hand.

Yes it’s fun. We as fans tend to have a few ‘key players’ that we like to follow, be it studio (KyoAni), directors (Watanabe, Shinbou) composers (Kanno, Kajiura) etc. It’s too bad the negative hype is sometimes so strong, though.

I think the reason people are so quick to mention KyoAni in their reviews is because 1) the studio doesn’t produce new series very often, and 2) when they do produce a new series, just about all of the time it becomes a big hit. And I’m not sure if Sakamichi no Apollon is the best comparison since the studio that’s producing it (Tezuka Productions?) hardly produces anime so most people don’t know them by name. More than the name of the studio, you’d probably hear Yoko Kanno or Shinichio Watanabe’s name.

By the way, KyoAni is my most favorite anime studio, mostly because I’m a big-time Haruhi fan (I love Lucky Star very much too). I’m a sucker for their quality animation, attractive character designs, and alluring way with conveying atmosphere and character expressions. Their marketing methods with Haruhi never fail to entertain me either.

Someone once called us ‘datebase animals’, and they were right😉. Everybody likes to focus on a few famous names. I do it myself so I shouldn’t complain. But you often see people starting a show with their mind already made up that it will suck, which is saddening >_<.

KyoAni is my favorite studio too, for all the reasons you mention plus the fact they avoid ecchi and have good script adaptations. Too bad they seem to be a negativity magnet. I suppose it might be easier to hate on a studio than a single person, And as you noted, it's KyoAni's success that makes it a huge target.

Besides ‘brand hegemony’ (lolol) ‘KyoAni’ is one of the studio names that’s a bit more meaningful: they’re a relatively small outfit with (thus far) a fairly homogenous output. Compare ‘Sunrise’, which is as I understand it, like, seven different studios who do different things.

(I am very tired of holier-than-thou posts berating fans for forming strong initial impressions based on very little evidence. That’s what humans do. A blogger who genuinely came to an anime as a blank slate would be horribly inhuman.)

Sometimes the studio behind a series is important, maybe because of the animation style that they employ, but more often than not its more a cult of personality. In the case of KyoAni, they were the studio behind several big Key adaptations, so they have quite a substantial ‘cult’ following, although not nearly as big as SHAFT.

Studio’s do add character, but often I think the director and producer, along with the staff involved in the story are more important, since while studios add character, it is these people who add the actual substance like story and characterisation. It all depends on how big a following each particular studio has gathered, and in this case it might be partly due to KyoAni rejecting the Little Busters project, which had the internent (or at least the small part devoted to Key fans) up in arms.

You’re certainly right in that the studio has a very important role to play, and some of them do have a preferred animation style. I’d argue that when people say SHAFT, they are usually thinking Shinbou, though😉.

With Little Busters, it might just be Kadokawa having more influence than Key. With how little KyoAni produces yearly, the ‘too busy’ excuse may actually be true, too. But there were certainly many disappointed fans. I think JC Staff gets the short end of the stick here, though, with everyone around basically implying they are a second-rate studio. They did bring this upon themselves with their unfaithful adaptations, but I still feel for them.

There is a certain fanaticism within anime when it comes to studios and adaptations of popular games, which unfortunately leads to people simply accusing certain studios of being rubbish. JC Staff havent helped their case, because like you say, they have been involved in a fair number of pretty bad, or worse, mediocre series, but they have been behind their fair share of excellent works.

In this case I think its the difference between a small studio like KyoAni, and a much larger studio with multiple teams like JC Staff, cant really tell what a show will be like, because they could have an excellent team, and everything simply ‘clicks’.

The role of a studio is a difficult one to pin down, sometimes people overstate a studio’s importance, other times they understate the importance of a studio.

JC Staff produced a lot of things that made me shake my head, but they also made the highly successful Railgun, which was a true pleasure to watch. As you say, it’s about the particular people involved and the chemistry they manage to create for a project.

As fans, we would die for a surefire way to predict which series we will like most. Maybe it’s not too odd that we build a relationship of trust with a studio, even if the people representing it may change somewhat with every title released. And that’s why it hurts when we are ‘betrayed’ by a studio later on.

KyoAni has a small handful of resident, in-house directors so their quality is consistent. (And Shaft has THE resident director.) I did some brief AniDB digging, and of the nine JC Staff series listed for 2012, there are ten different directors (Bakuman has two).

When I see people point to past JC Staff shows as an indicator of Little Busters’ potential quality, it’s always Nagai Tatsuyuki’s work: Railgun, Toradora, and Ano Natsu de Matteru. He did AnoHana with A1, which made it clear that it’s him, not the studio, that gives his work its quality and atmosphere. (He brought animation director Tanaka Masayoshi with him for AnoHana, so it even LOOKED like Toradora and Ano Natsu de Matteru.)

I don’t think fans would be nearly as worried with Nagai at the helm. Instead, Little Busters will be directed by Yamakawa Yoshiki, best known at the moment for Kill Me Baby. The best indicator we have is Hatsukoi Limited, which is his only other series. I haven’t seen it, but it’s encouraging that he has a romantic comedy under his belt. He’s also had room to grow in the three years since then, and I’m sure JC Staff would choose the director for such a big property as Little Busters with care.

No comments on the studio that made Sakamichi no Apollon? That’s like the best part about Sakamichi no Apollon.

I sort of agree with your point about branding, it can ruin people’s perceptions on some shows. However I think you are more than allowed to mention the studio by name lol. it’s a part of the advertisement for the anime these days.

[…] its animation studio was the critically acclaimed but also very polarising Kyoto Animation. Cytrus pointed out that, for a sample of first impression posts that he checked, 80% of them mentioned […]